Nekoda Davis took up judo aged six because it was the cheapest sport. You did not even need trainers, just a fighting spirit. She had that in abundance, having scrapped with her little brother since he was born. Brought up by their Jamaican mum, Ivy, on a council estate in Cricklewood, north-west London, there was no money for horse-riding or dancing or anything that would have required rackets or pads. But £2 a week Ivy could just about stretch to. And when she could not, her daughter’s first coach, Sheree Brannigan, would quietly waive the fee, believing Davis had the potential to be a world-class judoka one day.
Brannigan’s faith was well placed when on Monday her charge, now 23, made her Olympic debut in the -57kg category in Rio, striding out on to the mat and skipping from side to side like Rocky Balboa. Though only 1.57m (5ft 2in) in her bare feet she looked as if she meant business and she certainly did. But after sailing through a first-round match with the Austrian veteran Sabrina Filzmoser she faced a trickier draw to get past the last 16.
France’s Automne Pavia, ranked third in the world and a bronze medallist at the 2012 Olympics, was always going to be hard to beat. Fourteen centimetres taller and four years older than Davis, Pavia is renowned for her aggression in both offence and defence. She fought fiercely from the moment the referee declared the match open with a piercing “hajime!” and won by scoring a yuko with a harai-goshi throw 1min 51sec into the four-minute match.
Davis almost pushed her to four penalties that would have meant immediate disqualification but the Frenchwoman held her off. After four years of full-time training and two lots of four minutes Davis was heading home. But, if you think her Olympic dream is over, think again. She had not even caught her breath after her defeat when she was already vowing to return.
“You get beaten on the day, that’s just the way it is,” she said. “You’ve got to come back stronger, fitter. I 100% believe my day will come. I know I will be world champion, European champion and, hopefully, Olympic champion one day.”
Davis believes she has the edge over her rivals in one particular department: “There’s definitely no one here who I think is as mentally strong as I am.”
A background like Davis’s is often referred to as disadvantaged – single mother, immigrant background, social housing. Yet Davis sees her upbringing as an advantage. “I didn’t have everything as a kid growing up. I didn’t have a lot of materialistic things. My mum didn’t have a lot of money. She had quite a tough upbringing in life. She came over here from Jamaica with me to give us a better life. She always taught me not to take things for granted and anything you do get in life you’ve got to work hard for. I think that’s where my mental strength and toughness comes from, my mum being a single mum and how hard she struggled.
“I knew that I would have to put the work in in life to make something of myself and not be poor. So it really comes from that … Really the reason I got into judo is that it was the cheapest thing to do, growing up. I found it really hard to deal with that, to not have all the same things as my friends or not be able to go to dance lessons or learn a different language or play an instrument.”
The hard knocks have instilled in her an unusually firm sense of self-belief. “If you work hard and you stay on the path you will get there eventually. All the knockbacks are just making it even harder for you to get there but, when you do get there, it will be even more rewarding,” she said on Monday.
Davis was academic in school, getting good A-Levels in maths, further maths, chemistry, sociology and PE. But she decided not to go on to university after being offered the chance to train with British Judo centre of excellence in Walsall shortly after the 2012 Games, where she had worked as a volunteer. She told the Mail on Sunday last month how she worked in the administration centre at the ExCeL, where the judo took place, and would think up spurious reasons to watch her heroes in action, most notably the great Japanese judoka Kaori Matsumoto, who won gold in Nekoda’s lightweight category in London.
It is a measure of how humble Davis’s needs are that she is delighted simply to be getting enough national lottery funding now to pay the rent and eat. “Without that I wouldn’t be as comfortable as I am now. I can afford to pay for my rent and my food and just focus on my training, which is perfect really, coming from when I worked three jobs when I left school to being in the position I am now.”
Concentrating solely on judo soon paid dividends, when she won bronze at the European junior championships in 2013 and gold at the Commonwealth Games a year later. At the Zagreb Grand Prix in 2015 she won her 57kg category and came to the Olympics ranked 12th in the world. Before turning professional Davis was balancing training with babysitting, teaching judo in school and working in a Japanese sushi shop, who were particularly benevolent employers.
“Judo is a Japanese sport and they loved the fact I did judo and gave me time off work and would change the rotas around to suit my competition plan,” she said.
She is adamant that Rio is not the end but the beginning. “This is a stepping stone to Tokyo for me,” she said.
